Gloria's Story
by glennmayo
Summary: The dawn of the zombie apocalypse as seen through the eyes of one wife and mother as she brings her son to visit his father in prison.


The Walking Dead—Gloria's Story

Fan Fiction

by Glenn Mayo

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

1

She was always amazed at Jeffrey's ability to ignore the surroundings of this horribly depressing waiting room and simply be happy to see his dad. The place was a bleak beige-cinderblock nightmare, and every month she would make the drive from Augusta with the image of it in her head. The molded plastic chairs with their spindly cracked-chrome legs, the buzz of the fluorescent lights (couldn't somebody fix that, for God's sake?), the sullen and suspicious faces of the guards and attendants, the yeasty-rich stink of the place, the goddamned paperwork...she dreaded it with everything in her. Funny how, now that Jimmy had put her in this position, she had honed in on _this_, the precious time she wasted in this damn room (and, on busy Saturdays, it was sometimes _hours..._dragging, monotonous, monotone _hours _of waiting) as the thing she was most pissed at Jimmy about. She knew she was suppressing the worst of it, the stupidest of Jimmy's indiscretions, but somehow the hatred she had for sitting in this goddamn room waiting to allow her son to see his father on the other side of a piece of bulletproof glass, talking to his daddy on a _phone, _a goddamn _phone _for Christ's sake, was the sharpest. If she could reach through that glass like that guy in _The Matrix_ she would have slapped his hangdog face for that alone.

_You did this, you bastard. This is your fault. Period. You can't sweet-talk your way out of it like you've done with everything else your whole life. Fucking liar. You're going to work, you say? No, more like going to Mitch's crappy roachtrap apartment to catch a buzz (_BY THE WAY, I HOPE THE TWO OF YOU ARE HAVING FUN IN THERE!_) and then out to find a liquor store or a 7-11 to "knock off"-or is there some new, cool "ghetto" term for it now, Mister Badass Gangster?-before crawling back home to flop in the bed beside me when I have to be up in, what?, two hours, to get Jeffrey (YOUR SON) ready for school. If I'd even _thought_ to call the bar _even once_ I would have known you weren't there. Mister Brandt would have told me right on the spot what I eventually found out, after the two of you had been arrested, when I finally _did_ call. You hadn't been there for months. By the way, he said that you were the worst bartender he'd ever hired. Popular with the bar-hags, of course, but complete crap at the job itself. And now? Now? Now I have to bring my sweet boy, my BABY, to this godforsaken shithole once a month so you can have some semblance of an influence in his life?_

_You did this._

But Jeffrey.

Jeffrey was unfazed. For him this was somehow a field trip. Bouncing up and down in his seat all the way. All 200 miles, every month. Grinning at the guards at the gate, patient as a monk at the interminable sign-in, winning everyone over with that smile (and yes, it pissed her off that it was _Jimmy's _smile, the bastard), bubbling with excitement.

_You SO don't deserve that._

She watched him skip around the room, the hellhole, as if it were a playground. Touching every other chair in some internal little-boy game. Which was a little unusual, she thought. Usually pretty much every seat in the room was taken on a Saturday. Today, there were only half a dozen women (almost of all of them with at least one slumping, sullen child in tow) waiting miserably, like her. Only Jeffrey, her little Jeffrey, was the bright and shiny penny. He just had that ability. He made people smile because _he_ smiled so much. Not for the first time, Gloria wondered exactly where the hell he'd gotten that. He certainly hadn't gotten it from her. If _she'd_ ever had it, she'd lost it so long ago she couldn't possibly remember it.

Traffic coming in today had been light. That too, although a blessing, had seemed odd. Back in July, the line at the gate had eaten up over an hour of her life and probably three gallons of gas. Today, she and Jeffrey had driven right up to the guard.

"Howdy-do, Mrs. Thomas," he'd said. It had been Paul, the skinny-as-a-stick Barney Fife lookalike that Gloria thought of as her favorite. Once, she'd made the mistake of stopping halfway and letting Jeffrey get a fountain drink at the convenience store when she'd gassed up. By the time they got there Jeffrey had been squirming. Then the line through the gate...eternity. Paul had noticed as soon as they'd pulled up. He had let the boy use the toilet in the guard booth. Probably could have gotten fired for it.

"Hey Paul. Wide road today, huh?"

Jeffrey had leaned over in the passenger seat. "Hey, Paul!" That smile again. Always with the smile.

"Hey, Jeffrey!" he said. Turning back to her, he'd grinned. "Yep, guess it ain't a family-love kinda day today."

Gloria had smiled. "Yeah, well, it's still pretty dang hot."

"That it is. Head on in and grab a little A/C, courtesy of the great state of Georgia."

"Yes," she'd said, "the accommodations are _so _enticing."

"We aims to please," he's said, pressing the button that raised the gate. A wave of the peaked cap and she'd pulled ahead into the almost-deserted guest parking lot.

Most of the spouse-cars were rust-buckets, settled low on unmaintained shocks and speckled with paint-rot . Crime, for all of its allure, evidently didn't pay. Or if it did, it certainly didn't pay well.

Not in Georgia, anyway.

2

It had been a couple-joke between them, but the truth was that Gloria had been stone cold sober the night she'd met Jimmy.

Eight years ago.

She'd been over Carl for a while now. She'd changed her relationship status on Facebook months before, eliciting a wave of well-wishes and "you're better off" and "I didn't want to say this before, but..." comments from her friends (half of which she hadn't seen in years) and more than a few requests for dates. She had completely ignored the latter responses. Yes, she was over it. But that didn't mean that the race was on. All in good time. After Carl and his no-surprise-to-anyone girlfriends, including that two-faced, "let's-be-BFF's-forever" whore Caryn (who spells "Karen" like that, anyway?) Thornton, Gloria was enjoying being single. She was enjoying not having someone to account to.

Susan Craddock had been "that" friend from high school. The one who led you astray and made doing stupid, adolescent things seem perfectly inevitable. Gloria had been raised in a religious family, loving and nurturing and Godly (in fact, her parents, now retired, spent half their time in Africa doing missionary work, building schools and bringing Jesus; love to children who otherwise would never hear of him) and she had been the perfect fodder for Susan's all-inclusive recklessness. Gloria had burned the last two years of high school like the filter-end of a cigarette, drugs and boys and dark nights...always with Susan's breathless voice in her ear. It had taken years to rebuild her relationship with her parents.

Now, Susan was married with two kids and five bedroom and and Infinity, but when she'd contacted Gloria after the socially-networked announcement of the breakup with Carl, Gloria knew that Susan was still the same wild-child she'd known back "in the day." Suburbia might have coddled her a bit, but there was still that streak. It was the reason "Girl's Night Out" had been invented in the first place.

Gloria had, as with her date requests, initially ignored Susan's "you need a night to celebrate your freedom, girl!" messages. At the time, everything had been too fresh, and she had still been licking her wounds. She knew now that she was stronger than she'd been as a high-school sophomore—she wasn't worried about Susan dragging her into the hole again—but she was just too raw to risk it. Furthermore, she just didn't feel like it. A night out with the girls sounded more exhausting than fun.

But Susan had persisted. And after a few months, Gloria finally succumbed.

Susan had rented a limo (she could afford that kind of thing now, her husband was a partner at one of Augusta's top legal firms) and had put together half a dozen half-remembered acquaintances to party the night away. The first stop had been a joke of a women's strip club, where the "firemen" and "cops" had been anything but the hardbodies Susan had intended.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Susan had said, flipping her white-blond hair and stubbing her Camel Crush into her wine glass. "Let's hit someplace where you can get a drink without having to fill out a fucking credit application. Bitches, onward!"

The band had just started their second set, launching into "Play That Funky Music" as Susan led the group into The Crane Technique. Gloria thought, The _Crane _Technique? After the movie? Are you kidding me?

The bar was lively. The dance floor had filled up immediately, and although a headache was beginning to announce itself at the base of her skull, Gloria had instantly noticed the bass player. He was tall, like Carl, with the lean Texas-lank of some B-actor from a John Wayne movie. The attraction had been instantaneous. Unlike the others in the band, who were focused on their instruments, he smiled constantly, beamingly, to the crowd. For the next three or four songs, Gloria noticed that he never looked down once. His hands were sure, with a hard, veiny look that had stirred something in her.

_Great, you're now one of those dumb women who wants the guy in the band. The BAR band. Ugh._

But those hands. And that damn smile.

The ladies room had been on the opposite side of the stage. Gloria had excused herself from the group and was making her way across the outer edge of the crowded dance floor when a stray foot had caught her ankle and sent her flying. She had awkwardly planted, shoulder-first, at the edge of the stage when she suddenly felt a strong hand on her elbow, effortlessly pulling her to her feet. When she'd looked up, there had been that smile. He had come off the stage and was picking her up with one hand while simultaneously and continuously playing his bass—one-handed (_how do you do that?_)-with the other.

"Maybe you've had to much," he said over the music. His Georgia accent was butter.

"I'm not drunk," Gloria said, "I just tripped. Some asshole tripped me."

"Okay, okay." That smile again. Dammit. "You just stick to that story, honey."

In her head, Gloria heard Mr. Miyagi say, "If done properly, there is no defense."

The apartment had been small and cramped, but it had been enough. She'd only been with Jimmy for two months when she missed her first period.

So that was it.

The band, Cat Scratch Fever, unceremoniously broke up just about the time Gloria had started to show.

Jimmy swore he'd find work.

He had smiled when he'd said it.

3

Gloria hadn't realized she was dozing until the alarm went off, almost flinging her out of her chair. She instantly scanned the room for Jeffrey, and found him no more than ten feet away, his ever-present smile gone, his head cocked upward like the RCA Victor dog at the sound of the shrieking horn attached to the ceiling. The sound was deafening, horrific, unbearable. Gloria leaped from her chair and put her arms around Jeffrey, pulling him instinctively close to her body. He was slim like his father, and tall for a seven-year-old, but he retreated into her and let her hold him. The alarm (siren?) hurt her ears, a slicing sensation each time the tone swooped down and back up again. Jeffrey put his hands to his ears and Gloria let go of him to do the same, and at once the alarm stopped.

Panicked, she scanned the room. The other wives/mothers were all standing. Most were covering their ears. A few children had crawled under their seats. In the wake of the alarm, the sudden silence seemed enormous. A thin sound arose, a high, whimpering treble that Gloria, in horror, realized was coming from Jeffrey. He looked up at her, his head against her belly. His eyes were wide.

"What was that noise, Mommy?"

"I don't know, baby. But I think we need to leave."

"What about Daddy? Is Daddy going to be ok?"

"Yes," she said sickly, "Daddy's going to be fine."

Gloria scanned the room. Aside from the few visitors huddling in the room, they were utterly alone. Behind the glass partition, where the administration personnel usually sat, trudgingly working their way through whatever paperwork was necessary for a prisoner to exchange a few words with his family, there was no one. The room was empty.

_Prison riot,_ Gloria thought, and immediately bristled with anger again. _Jimmy, you've put your wife and son in the middle of a _prison riot_? Seriously? _

The speaker attached to the ceiling sputtered and emitted a quick crackle of hiss. Then a voice, almost as loud as the alarm:

"ALL VISITORS MUST LEAVE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY. ALL VISITATION IS HEREBY CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. OFFICIALS WILL ESCORT YOU OUTSIDE THE BUILDING. PLEASE FOLLOW THE MARKED HALLWAY UNTIL YOU REACH THE YELLOW EXIT DOORS. ALL VISITORS MUST LEAVE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY. ALL VISITATION..."

_A recording_, Gloria thought. _A fucking recording. Something serious has happened. Something bad._

There was a loud click behind her. Gloria spun, yanking Jeffrey around with her, and saw the door to the waiting room pop slightly ajar. _Magnetic lock_, she thought. _Some fail-safe system is letting us out of here._

But where were these "officials" that the idiotic robot-voice kept saying would "escort" them out of the building? The recording played over and over, over and over. It was as unnerving as anything else.

She could hear shouts, almost screams, coming from beyond the door.

Surely someone was coming. The voice kept saying so. Surely there was some kind of containment, some contingency.

Gloria wasn't going to wait. She took Jeffrey by the hand and started for the door. They had to get out of here.

"What are we supposed to do?" one of the women in the room said. She was standing near the administration window, her daughter peeking from behind her hip. "Are we supposed to wait for somebody? What's going on? Is it a riot?"

"I don't know what it is," Gloria said, "but I'm getting the hell out of here and I think you all should do the same—"

Gunshots. A lot of them. Rapid-fire and echoing down some unseen hallway beyond the door. Echoing. Brief silence, and then a sound Gloria had never heard before. Guttural and animalistic, but also oddly _flat_ in a way that was instinctively repulsive. Like a wounded animal standing its ground in the final moment before death. Gloria felt her stomach churn at the sound of it.

"What the FUCK was that?" the woman shrieked.

"I don't know," Gloria said. "And I don't intend to stick around and find out."

She grabbed Jeffrey's wrist and ran for the door.

4

More gunshots, automatic weapons. Somewhere.

Gloria looked left and right down the hallway and saw no one. Flickering fluorescents on glaring green-speckled linoleum.

Down the corridor and to the right. Then past the lock gate (_please be open!) _and to the left. Twenty yards past that was her Ford Escort and then the road out. Then the highway, then Augusta, then home. She could watch this on the news. Wait for word on Jimmy.

Jeffrey whimpered.

"What is that shooting, Mommy? Who's shooting?"

"I don't know, baby. Just follow me and we'll go home for today, ok? We can come back next week."

"But what about Daddy? Daddy's _that _way"-he pointed down toward the opposite end of the darkened hallway-"where they're shooting guns. Are they shooting Daddy?"

"No, baby," Gloria said, "Your Daddy might be a lot of things, but he's not going to do anything to get himself shot, believe me. I'm sure he's somewhere safe. Just take my hand, ok?"

Jeffrey's lip was quivering. He looked up at Gloria, his eyes welling with tears.

"Are you sure? Are you sure Daddy's ok?"

She knelt, bringing her eyes level with his.

"No," she said. "I'm not sure. Not one hundred percent, no. But your Daddy is strong and he's smart and he can handle himself. And he would want us to get as far away from here as we can, as fast as we can. Do you understand?"

Jeffrey nodded.

"Then let's go."

They headed down the hallway with the sounds of gunfire, the shouts, and more of that unearthly howling (_what IS that?, _she thought_) _welling and booming and echoing behind them. It was impossible to tell if the sounds were coming closer or getting farther away, and Gloria fought hard to keep her panic down.

When they reached the end of the corridor and turned right, Gloria saw someone coming toward them. The light from the other end of the hallway, near the lock gate, was bright, but even so she could recognize Paul, the guard from the outside gate. He slumped toward them in stagger-steps, his feet shuffling, head down. His gunbelt hung low on his narrow hips. Gloria could see that his weapon was still holstered.

_Oh my God, _she thought, _he's been shot._

She started toward him, and suddenly Jeffrey broke free, running ahead of her.

"Paul! Paul! It's me, Jeffrey! There's shooting! Do you think my Daddy's-"

Paul raised his head.

In the uncertain light, Gloria saw that Paul's left eye was gone, gored as if it had been scooped out with a trowel. Thick sheets of dry-black blood had painted his cheek and splattered down over his collar and his state-issued badge. There was a dark spread on his bony chest from which a steady trickle of blood oozed in viscous, slow runnels. Something had happened to his skin. It had thinned, and seemed to be tearing, _retreating_ at the corners of his mouth and around his remaining eye, which had gone milky and luminescent, like a blind man's eye.

Like a dead man's eye.

"Jeffery, no!" she screamed, but Jeffrey was too far ahead of her, his shoes skidding on the slick linoleum. She saw Paul's right hand snap forth and grab Jeffrey by the wrist, pulling him to the floor.

She ran. "Paul, what are you doing? Let me help you! We've got to get out of here! What is going.."

She was still ten feet away from them when Paul, pinning Jeffrey to the floor with his knee, picked up Jeffrey's left hand and put it in his mouth. There was a sickening crunching sound as Paul bit down and pulled his head to the right. Jeffrey's hand erupted in a spray of blood, and when Paul bent his mouth back to the hand again, Gloria could see that her son was missing the thumb his forefinger. Jeffrey howled in pain.

"Nooooooo!" she screamed, and ran toward them.

Time stretched. Gloria could hear her own footfalls. So slow. Too slow. Jeffrey's head was thrown back in agony, and Paul bent to him again, this time to the soft and exposed white of his throat. She could see Jeffrey's legs kicking in anguish. Paul raised his head to her, an impossibly enormous flap of flesh hanging from his teeth. He began to chew, slurping the meat into his mouth.

Gloria reached them in a headlong rush, toppling over them and knocking Paul away from the boy, who had ceased to flail and now, horribly, lay still with a growing pool of blood spreading around him. Paul's revolver had been jolted from its holster, and Gloria scrambled for it. Paul seemed to ignore the weapon and pounced on her, his body on hers, his dripping mouth above hers, splattering her face. She pushed the gun into his ribcage and fired three shots. Paul was blown away from her by the force, but immediately scrambled back toward her.

Lying on her side, she could see him crawling toward her, shrieking that horrible sound she'd first heard in the waiting room, his face a ruin of gore and decay and some kind of dark, unthinking _need _and she fired the gun twice, almost blindly. The first shot hit him in the jaw, tearing away the left side of his face, and the second hit him just above the left eye, shearing away the upper portion of his skull. Blood and brain spattered against the wall.

Paul lay still, his one eye open, no more dead or alive than when Gloria had seen it twenty seconds before.

She scrambled to her knees and crawled to Jeffrey. The boy was still. The blood around him had stopped spreading.

She got to her knees and began administering CPR, but when she blew into his mouth she heard the sound of her own breath escaping through her son's torn throat. She tried his pulse. Nothing.

More gunshots from behind. Getting closer.

She pumped Jeffrey's chest, listened. Gave him breath, listened. Pumped again, listened.

Nothing.

Footsteps. Some running, yes, but some shambling. That goddamn _noise._

_My BABY._

Something in her broke, and she screamed. She screamed for her son, for her mother and her father and for the starving children in Africa. She screamed for her baby, her little man, she screamed for his precious smile. His Daddy's smile.

Her bright, shiny penny.

5

Brightness. Too much brightness. The lock gate had been open and she had plunged through it, Paul's revolver dangling from her limp and unthinking hand, into the unbearable Georgia sun. Into the heat. Her baby was dead and she didn't know what she was doing and she didn't know what _to_ do and the insanity she hadn't imagined thirty minutes ago kept coming in waves and she ran to the sounds of the booming gunshots and the screaming coming from the prison Jimmy had forced her to come to and she ran.

She ran.

The fence between the lock-gate and the parking lot was closed. Some kind of goddamn magnet lock. She pulled and pulled but the noises behind her were closer. Fewer gunshots, more monster-howls now. She could fucking _see_ it, right there, not fifty feet away, the Ford with the steering that pulled to the left and the feeble air-conditioning and the fifteen remaining payments. The keys were in her pocket.

Right _there. _With its McDonald's bags on the floorboard and its half-full gas tank and its promise of escape from this place she (_and my BABY!) _should have never seen as long as they lived.

Right _there._

The fence was topped with loops of barbed wire and she began to scale it. Maybe she could crawl between the barbs, the razors...

Then she heard the _noise _again, coming from behind her. Halfway up the fence, she looked behind her and saw them spill from the entrance.

Them. Whatever they were. No more shooting now, except the one bullet she had left in Paul's revolver. Somewhere in her run, after her son, somehow...she had remembered to save one for herself.

She let go of the fence and dropped to the ground. They seemed to be slow, but there were a lot of them. Most dressed in prison jumpsuits, but some in riot gear. Stumbling, lost except for whatever seemed to be driving them.

Towards her. Too close.

There was a fenced perimeter that ran around the prison like a moat. She could run. Maybe that would give her time to scale it and at the very least get to where they couldn't reach her. Surely, someone would come. Surely.

She ran.

Across what they must have called "The Yard" and to the perimeter fence, her mind a meaningless wail of blind panic, her speed better than theirs but there were so many, so many.

The fence against her hands, rough and oxidized. Tearing, ripping. The revolver, her only hope, tucked into the waistband of her jeans. To the top, the razor-world, the coils slashing at her skin, through her blouse...

A hand grabbed her foot, flailing, and she pulled free, falling forward into the safe zone. Paul's pistol fell to the ground and discharged aimlessly, uselessly, impotently. She landed hardscrabble on her left leg and heard the _snap! a_s it broke.

The fence sagged under the weight of them, but she was still. Soon, they lost interest.

They were simple, after all, and moved on to easier prey. But they would return.

6

DAY 35

they are hungry at the fence but so am I and this sun is so hot like africa my mommy and my daddy i love you and the starving children and my baby my BABY in that hallway and remember applebee's and those chicken fingers and the sauce so good and it's hot and these rocks here say how many days i've laid here and i can't get up and there's jimmy with his smile and my baby's smile and it's so hot and it's getting dark and I pray to jesus my soul to take and i'm sorry for all wrong i've done and my baby

7

DAY 35

_It is hungry and there is nothing and this is hunger and it wants and it is hungry and there is nothing to smell that is food and it is dark and it is light and it is hungry_

8

DAY 312

_can hear the meat and there is smell and hungry and motion and give me because I want and it is mine for my hungry man man man meat for my hungry and _BO _and the sound it is loud and it is loud and it is _MOTOR _it is _MOTOR _it is _MOTORSYCLCLE _and up and up (leg?) and it is meat food closer and closer and it is a thing the meat and hungry and hungry and it is closer and i want and HUNGRY it is closer and it FENCE NO FENSE it is HUNGRY i have hungry hungry hungry i need i want i can smell and BO it is a BO it is close and it has a BOW and it has a CROSS it has a CROSSB_


End file.
